What’s more, this year’s winner of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, which has also gone to some fairly odd choices, reportedly has refused to speak in Adonis’ honor on November 20 in Osnabrück. Meanwhile, city officials in Osnabrück say they knew the award would spark controversy and gave it for Adonis’s “advocacy for a separation of religion and state and for equal rights for women in the Arab world.”

Event additions

On September 16, writer and editor Anna Della Subin presents a reading of Tawfiq al-Hakim’s 1933 play The People of the Cave as part of Triple Canopy’s The Long Tomorrow issue. If you’re in NYC, there’s more online.

2015’s International Prize for Arabic Fiction winner Shukri Mabkhout is among the authors taking part in Berlin’s International Literature Festival (ILB), which opens September 9 at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele. Samar Yazbek will also be there.